Anthropocene Apocalypse – A terrible death for Turtles.

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Opher

Anthropocene Apocalypse – A terrible death for Turtles.

Historically the poor large sea turtles have been hounded and tortured to the point of extinction. It’s eggs were stolen, its shell used for ornament and it was boiled for oil (sometimes alive). The turtles were heartlessly stacked alive upside down on decks of schooners so they could slaughter them for fresh meat when needed. One can only imagine the agonies they went through for weeks on end.

Today the situation is not much better. Their eggs are still stolen, their shells still used for decoration and their meat still eaten. On top of that they get caught and drowned in fishing nets, poisoned in polluted waters and die from ingesting plastic. Their breeding beaches are taken over by people and climate change is ravaging them.

They are beautiful and just one of the many, many thousands of species that we are destroying through our overpopulation, thoughtless, greedy action and callous brutality.

Action needs taking before we lose them forever.

Nature on the Run – a poem

Posted on July 26, 2019 by Opher

Nature on the Run

Nature on the run

In a great killing spree;

Chainsaws, chemicals and bullets

By political decree.

Rainforests – the lungs

Of the world –

In danger of choking

As all the trees are felled.

Displaced creatures

Crawl off to die.

As thoughtless greed

Threatens you and I.

Opher – 8.7.2019

There is a great madness at work as we continue to plunder and pillage nature without a thought for the future.

Species after species is sent tumbling to extinction so that executives of corporations and politicians can live in luxury.

Without a thought for tree or creature we are ripping up the world.

Hard Times are Coming – a poem

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Opher

Hard Times are Coming

From the water world to the drought

Hard times are coming.

From the Sahara ocean

To the Atlantic desert

Hard times are on their way.

Growing crops on mountain tops.

Hard times are coming

From the arid Amazon

To the flooded Gobi

Hard times are on their way.

Fishing over Holland, trawling Bangladesh

Hard times are coming.

Cities under water

Fields a fishing bank

Hard times are on their way.

They are coming

They are on their way.

Shoulda listened

To what they had to say.

Opher – 1.4.2019

There are a bunch of very wealthy people who profit from destruction and chaos. Their enemy is stability and order.

They are immoral beyond understanding. They don’t pull and triggers, wield any chainsaws, or even give orders. They just quietly work in the background creating the circumstances, buying off the right people, influencing the decisions – and creaming off the vast profits.

Somehow they have convinced a segment of people that they cannot believe anything they hear. The Earth is flat. There were no moon landings. 9/11 was the CIA. The UN is an instrument of the globalist wealthy. All scientists and experts lie and are in the pay of politicians. Capitalism has raised standards for ordinary people.

The result is that all wealth of the world is concentrated in a few hundred pockets. Billions live in abject poverty and are exploited. There are wars. The environment is being systematically destroyed. The tsunami of human beings is swamping the world.

They do not care. They profit from it. This is just how they like it.

But hard times are coming. We know who will be to blame. It will be us.

Poetry – Elefantasy – a poem in my Anthropocene Apocalypse series about the terrible tragedy occurring to the majestic elephants.

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Opher

Poetry – Elefantasy – a poem in my Anthropocene Apocalypse series about the terrible tragedy occurring to the majestic elephants.

Elefantasy

Matriarchal tribe

Even with bull

In his prime.

Gestation lengthy

Baby suckles

Loved all the time.

For the love of a tooth

Ripped from a dying head

The family too is ripped

As father’s blood is shed.

Opher 4.7.2015

Only a decade ago I was out on safari in ecstasy as I watched the herd of elephants with calves stroll around us. The big bull stood in the centre of the track with ears spread wide, watching us intently. The driver had his hand on the gear and his foot on the pedal. I was enthralled as father twitched his tail and flapped his ears. He decided we meant no harm. The herd passed through following their old female leader and the Bull followed up the rear. I watched as they melted into the foliage and disappeared from sight.

I thought they were only disappearing from sight. They were disappearing from the planet. They are being slaughtered by the thousand and hunted to extinction.

The superstition of Chinese medicine and the love of ivory carving has created a market that is as obscene as it is stupid. Ivory is exactly the same stuff your teeth are made of. It has no magic power. But rhinos and elephants are being hunted and cruelly killed. Their tusks and horns are hacked out of their heads with machetes even while they still live. It is obscene.

Poetry – The Horn – a poem about rhinoceroses and their imminent extinction. An Anthropocene Apocalypse poem.

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Opher

Poetry – The Horn – a poem about rhinoceroses and their imminent extinction. An Anthropocene Apocalypse poem.

The Horn

I’ve got the horn

Ripped straight

From the Head

Does wonders in Bed.

An explosion of lead

Stagger

And dead.

Hacked clean

Into something

Obscene.

Poor eyesight;

It never saw us

The very last

Rhinoceros.

Opher 4.7.2015

We are rapidly wiping out the wild things, the forests, the wilderness as we increase in number and extend our range. Soon the whole world will be a huge concrete and plastic jungle.

We may keep the DNA safe so that in saner times it might be reconstituted into living organisms.

One day, when we’ve become wiser and more civilised, there might be a programme to reinstate nature. I’m not sure I would completely approve. Designed wilderness is a poor substitute but perhaps it will be better than nothing.

If we survive that long.

The rhino is doomed because of superstition and money. You may as well use nail filings as rhino horn. They are exactly the same keratin. There is no medicinal value. It does not give you the horn. Yet the customers will pay. The rhinos will pay and the hunters get paid. That is how decision in this world get made.

Poetry – The Story of Our Brother – a poem to the demise of the last Chimpanzee.

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Opher

Poetry – The Story of Our Brother – a poem to the demise of the last Chimpanzee.

The Story of Our Brother

One last breath

And then it’s done –

Into history.

One pull of the finger

And that’s

The end of the story.

The chimpanzee

Was just like me

But now

The blood will dry

And there’s no family

To cry.

The fossils will remain

For a while

And then it’s one more

Crime to file

And no one cares

How our brother

Fares.

When he’s gone

It’s done.

End of story.

Opher – 4.7.2015

I was inspired to write a little series of poems. They came out of my Anthropocene Apocalypse writings and my conversations with my friends Kathy and Toby.

I have witnessed the whole-sale destruction of the world’s rainforests where-ever I have travelled – Peru, Vietnam, Australia, Tasmania, Africa. The story is the same.

I have witnessed the casual cruelty meted out to animals and the brutal way wild animals are slaughtered.

It distresses me.

As our numbers spiral the destruction increases and the slaughter escalates. The world is finite.

In my own life-time I may see the demises of tigers, elephants, rhinos, chimps, gorillas, lemurs and hundreds of thousands of others. There may well be no rainforest left.

I find that devastating. And believe me – it is real.

Vietnam – 70% of rainforest cleared in 40 years. Madagascar – just 10% left. It is relentless and stupid.

The last chimp will likely be shot by a hunter just like the dodo was. We share 99% of our genes but he will be meat on a plate. It is a terrible crime.

The Dark Ages – a poem

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Opher

The Dark Ages

‘What were the Dark Ages, Dad?’

Dad looked thoughtful and sad.

‘A time of ignorance when things were bad.’

‘When did the Dark Ages end?’ she asked.

Dad looked at her with face aghast.

‘We don’t know how long they’ll last.’

Opher – 20.7.2019

We tend to look back at history and wonder how people could do such things, believe such things and behave so cruelly. We see them as primitive, foolish and brutal.

They are no different to us.

We live in the same ignorance and the same level of vicious depravity. We never learn.

I was looking at the butchery of the timid dolphins and porpoises in the Faroes and seeing the same vicious bloodlust and inhumanity. It’s still there unchanged. I look at ISIS, the Baptists from the Southern States, The Creationists, Boko Haram and all the others and see the same blind ignorance and belief in scriptures from barbaric times.

The Dark Ages – we’re still living them. Oh for a bit of light!

Opher’s World – The Blog that is the opposite of politics – I say what I think without regard to what anybody else thinks!

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Opher

Opher’s World – The Blog that is the opposite of politics – I say what I think without regard to what anybody else thinks!

The trouble with politicians is that they are after your vote. They will say whatever they believe might win you over. They will promise the earth.

In the end they will cost us the earth.

My blog is different. I speak my mind and I don’t care what anybody thinks. What you get is me. Take it or leave it. I pander to no one.

If I think something is wrong I speak out.

If I think something is beautiful I record it.

I live to communicate and create. I live to change the world for the better.

You will probably agree with some and hate other bits. But that’s OK. I won’t lie. You know where you stand.

I stand for justice, freedom, tolerance, love, peace and happiness for all. I want justice for all life on the planet and an end to overpopulation and environmental destruction.

It’s simple.

Anthropocene Apocalypse – the Rights of Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Whales?

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Opher

Anthropocene Apocalypse – the Rights of Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Whales?

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Opher

The Civil Rights battle is won. Human Beings are all one species and equal before the law in most countries. All that remains is to enforce the law, remove the vestiges of racism and establish true equality. There are still battles to be fought but the war is won.

What hasn’t yet been won is Rights for Primates and other sentient animals.

The primates (Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Gibbons and Bonobos) are our closest relatives. They are obviously intelligent, have advanced family structures and behaviour patterns and yet are still being treated like vermin. Their habitat is being destroyed by logging and they are being butchered for food, trinkets, medicine and to procure pets.

We need a world-wide Civil Rights movement for Primates. They are need to be afforded rights, protected and given land to live in undisturbed.

Another group of intelligent organisms are the whales, dolphins and porpoises. They have bigger and more complex brains than humans, a social structure, language and high intelligence yet they are still being barbarically gaffed and callously hacked and sawed to death in barbaric acts. They too need to be afforded rights as sentient beings and protected!

Now is the time to campaign for Animal Rights!!!

Wonder and Awe – Man and Intelligence.

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Opher

Wonder and Awe – Man and Intelligence.

The saddest aspect of being a human being is that there is only one species of us. It has led us to believe we are something special, something that is above all other life. Many people struggle to think of us as animals.

We are animals. We are intelligent animals. We have fabulous brains that give us consciousness. We think that sets us apart. It doesn’t.

We are not the most intelligent animal that has ever lived on this planet, let alone what intelligences may exist on other worlds. We are not even the most intelligent organism on this planet now. We are not even the most intelligent species of human who has ever lived on this planet.

Brains operate like super-computers. It is the size that is important. Our brains contain 85 billion brain cells – neurons – which is about the same number of stars as in a small galaxy. However each of those cells is connected via dendrites to between 10,000 and a 100,000 other brain cells. That is a staggering number of connections.

The human brain is between 1300 grams (the racists) and 1400 grams (the rest of us).

By comparison the brain of a chimpanzee (our closest relative with whom we share 99% of our genes) is only 400 grams.

There was a rapid evolutionary change occurred around 1.8 million years ago (very recent in evolutionary terms). Our brains grew from 400 grams to 1400 grams.

I said earlier that we are not the most intelligent animal on the planet. That distinction falls to the cetaceans. Not all of us consider them super-intelligent because they do not build cities and weapons. That is how we judge intelligence.

Whales and dolphins do not have limbs to create tools. They live in the sea and do not need shelter. They have plentiful food and do not need to work.

They play, sing, spend time together and enjoy themselves. They do not pollute, overpopulate or destroy one another. They are not cruel, barbaric and vicious. They do not create religions.

That sounds like intelligence to me.

The size of a sperm whales brain is a staggering 7800 grams. That is over five times that of a human.

The brain of a bottle-nose dolphin is between 1500-1700 grams – bigger than a human.

Of course you may like to suggest that intelligence is not all about brain size. The evidence from bird intelligence (with small brains) is that there are other factors though size is crucially important.

If you take into account body mass to brain ratio then we still do not come out too good. Even the tree shrew outdoes us.

The obvious intelligence of the cetaceans is extant in numerous ways and makes it even more disgusting when you consider the incredibly callous way we have treated them. We have deployed our technology to kill races of gentle, intelligent creatures. We have blown them up with explosive harpoons, stabbed and hacked them to death. In the Faroes they are still gaffing and sawing through their necks. The barbarity is appalling.

These creatures are probably more intelligent and sensitive than humans. Stop the slaughter!

It seems incredible to me that we spent billions trying to find even the most crudest form of life elsewhere in the galaxy while ignoring the obvious intelligent life under our own noses. Perhaps we should be trying harder to communicate?

Back to the subject.

I said earlier that we are not the most intelligent human that has lived on this planet. That accolade goes to the Neanderthals. We share a common ancestor and we even have some of their genes. There was some successful interbreeding. The Neanderthals, far from being the shambling cavemen of our cartoons, were more intelligent than us. Their brain size was 1500 grams to 1800 grams.

As more intelligent humans they were probably gentler. We – the moronic cousins – were more cynical and vicious. We lived side by side up until as recently as a mere 150,000 years ago. Then we destroyed them.

How I wish we hadn’t. Wouldn’t it be great if there were two intelligent species of human beings living on this planet now? It would blow all that religious superiority out of the water – particularly when we were clearly the lesser of the two in intelligence. The biblical stories would simply not hold water.

But that was not to be. We, the inferior intelligence, prevailed.

It goes to show that there is more to being human than intelligence.

Animal rights